Allan Wilson

Allan Wilson (18 October 1934-21 July 1991) was a New Zealander biochemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley who pioneered the use of molecular approaches to understand evolutionary change and reconstruct phylogenies.

Biography
Allan Wilson was born in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand in 1934, and, while living on his family's rural farm, he became known as a child prodigy, and he graduated from the University of Otago in 1955 at the age of 21. He gained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, and he became a biochemistry professor there in 1964. During the 1970s, he studied human evolution using molecular evidence, and his work attracted a great amount of attention. Wilson demonstrated the concept of the "molecular clock", deducing the time in prehistory when two species diverged. He died in Seattle in 1991 at the age of 56 from leukemia.